SHENANDOAH
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Hayride to Hell Tour
The day after we finished vocals on ‘The Road Not Taken’ album we packed up our NEW van and headed to Portsmouth, OH for a show up there the next night and we were to leave there and deadhead west for California to meet up with ‘Ballie and the Boys’, ‘The Desert Rose Band’, ‘SKB’ and ‘Southern Pacific’ for what was to be billed the ‘Highway To Stardom’ tour. We all affectionately called it ‘The Hayride To Hell’ tour.
This was the trip I told about earlier when our road manager had gotten a call from Rick Hall’s office saying Marty and Jim needed to fly back to Muscle Shoals to fix some vocals and guitar work. So I won’t go over that again here.
Inside the van. You can see Ralph in the back sleeping. That’s how we had to do it in those days.
We didn’t have any extra money to spend on our trip out west and I remember by the time we had gotten to Wyoming we were sick of the ‘cheese and baloney’ in our cooler. That’s all we’d eaten for 2 days.
Ralph in the van
So the next town we pulled into, we had our road manager, Billy Henderson pull some road float and we got a bucket of hot Kentucky Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. I still remember how good that was. I don’t know if I ever enjoyed a meal more than I did that one. Finally something hot! yum yum!
We pulled into San Francisco the day before our first show of ‘The Hayride To Hell’ tour, and had some time to kill so we decided to do a little sightseeing. After all, we’d never been to San Francisco before…and it’s some kind of pretty out there!
After Jim and Marty’s flights came in that morning we went over to the radio station and did a quick interview on air and then decided we’d go see Alcatraz. We took the ferry over and was just astounded at what that place really was. Truly amazing.
Me, Marty & Jim went to see Alcaraz on our first day in San Fransisco.
We had all seen the Clint Eastwood movie, ‘Escape From Alcatraz’ so it was pretty exciting being there. I remember walking into one of the cells and stretching my arms out and putting my hands flat against the walls and yelling to Jim & Marty, “Man, look how narrow these cells are. I can put my hands flat against both walls”. About that time a park ranger from Alcatraz stuck his head around the corner and said, “Hey…are you one of those Shenandoah guys”? Surprised that anybody would have a clue who we were way out there, I said ‘Yes’.
The park ranger and us at Alcatraz on our exclusive tour.
He said, “I heard you guys on the radio earlier and recognized your hillbilly accent”. Haha Then he asked us if we wanted to see the ‘REAL’ Alcatraz…the one that most of the public never gets to see. So we put on hard hats and he took us underground into areas that not many eyes ever get to see. Plus we got to see Al Capone’s cell and the ‘Birdman from Alcatraz’. He showed us where the escape happened. It was an amazing tour of that old prison one that none of us will ever forget it.
All the other bands on the ‘Hayride to Hell’ tour were traveling around in their comfortable buses while we were toughing it out in our little van. Jim tells a story about overhearing Thom Schuyler who was in SKB outside our van one night saying, “You know out of all the bands on this baby-band tour, the one that will probably make it is these Shenandoah guys because they are ignorant and have left their egos at home.
Shenandoah van next to all the other tour buses on the ‘Hayride to Hell’ tour.
They don’t even have enough sense to get a tour bus.” Well I’m paraphrasing that story, but the gist was he thought in part because all those other bands had come from success elsewhere that they would all demand too much while we didn’t know we could demand anything. We were just making music. Funny….Thom ended up being our record label president when we signed at RCA later.
‘Southern Pacific’ had John McFee and Keith Knudsen formerly of the Doobie Brothers in their band and had played big arenas all over the world. As had ‘The Desert Rose Band’ featuring Chris Hillman who was in ‘The Byrds’ and ‘The Flying Burrito Brothers’ from the 60′s. ‘SKB’ which was Thom Schuyler, Fred Knoblock and Craig Bickhart all of who came from successful songwriting careers. So everybody but us had already had a taste of success. We were pretty dumb looking back. But Thom was probably right. If we had’ve known what they all did, we might not have stuck around either
The tour itself was a once-in-a-lifetime trip though. We got to drive through the Redwood Forrest at the crack of daylight and see all of God’s awesome handiwork there. You can’t believe how BIG those trees really are unless you’re standing next to one. There’s nothing like that place.
Universal Studios tour. Here’s the house from the movie ‘Psycho’.
We got to see ‘Universal Studios’ in Hollywood and take the tour that they do there. Just there alone we saw where tv shows like Tarzan and Leave It To Beaver were shot…..and also where the movies Jaws, Psycho, The Ten Commandments and Back To The Future were shot. It was a hoot!
Universal tour. From the movie Jaws
Later in the tour we got to play ‘The Aladdin Casino’ in Las Vegas. None of us had ever seen so many lights in one place before….not even at Christmas time. That was a lot of fun too.
Here’s the outside of the Aladdin Casino from the ‘Hayride to Hell’ tour. We arrived after dark.
Later we played in Palm Springs at a place called the ‘Bob Hope Cultural Center’. The story that sticks out there was us getting there a few hours before anybody else did. I guess just out of boredom and wanting to be silly (as most of you who know me personally know I am) I got out of our van because I’d seen a Roadrunner running around the parking lot so I chased it all over the place.
Bob Hope Cultural Center. This is Southern Pacific sound-checking here.
I used to be pretty fast in my younger days but it was faster than me. At one point it flew up in this little tree not more than 10 feet tall and I picked up a rock and yelled back at the guys, ‘Watch this!”. Now I would’ve never thought in a million years from the distance I was from that bird that I’d ever even come close to hitting it. I must’ve been 100 feet from that tree, but I reared back and let that rock go and low and behold I hit that bird right in the head and out it fell. I felt terrible about that for a long time. I was just acting silly and accidentally nailed it. I don’t know that it killed it. It probably did, but I didn’t want to know for sure. It’s California’s state bird so thats my story and I’m sticking to it.
By the time that tour was over we were worn out and couldn’t wait to get home. We had been gone almost 4 weeks.
On August 8, 1988 they released the first single off of the ‘Road Not Taken’ album, ‘Mama Knows’. By December it had reached #5 on the Billboard charts.